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I/O! I/O! It’s off to disk we go...

You’ve issued your select query – the data isn’t in memory and so you’ve got to go to disk to get it. There are no dwarves to help you so the question is - How is this satisfied? What exactly is read-ahead? Does the edition you have installed affect how this is performed? Does partitioning alter anything? That’s just the half of it – there’s writes to talk about too. Understand the fundamentals of SQL Server I/O in this one hour practical session.

James Rowland-Jones is a Principal Consultant for The Big Bang Data Company. His focus and passion is to architect and deliver highly scalable analytical platforms that are creative, simple, and elegant in their design. James specializes in big data warehouse solutions that leverage both SQL Server Parallel Data Warehouse and Hadoop ecosystems.
James is a keen advocate for the SQL Server community; both internationally and in the UK. He currently serves on the Board of Directors for PASS and sits on the organising committee for SQLBits - Europe's largest event for the Microsoft Data Platform. James has been awarded Microsoft’s MVP accreditation since 2008 for his services to the community.